


A Heart of Steel

by scxlias



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Superheroes/Superpowers, F/F, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-08-30
Updated: 2017-09-18
Packaged: 2018-12-21 21:43:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 7,015
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11953236
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scxlias/pseuds/scxlias
Summary: All Jack ever wanted was to join the League of Heroes like his father, but when an accident leaves his powers on the fritz, his plans have to change.Coming from a small town in Georgia, Eric's never really been around people who have powers as strong as his, and he's never had someone to help him use them right.And they each might be exactly what the other needs, even if they can't really see it yet.





	1. New York

**Author's Note:**

> this was meant to be a fic for the Check Please Big Bang but I'm a disaster, so it's getting posted in chapters as I finish it instead. 
> 
> title from Superheroes by the Script.

It starts with a fire. 

Kent Parson has a fiery personality with abilities to match and the hotheadedness is starting to show. 

“Jack, duck!” he shouts, and Jack barely has time to hit the ground before there is fire cutting through the air where he had just been standing. He misses by a lot, hitting a building instead of the man he was aiming for. Jack stands back up and shoots Kent a look, flicking his wrist and putting out the flames that are licking at the brick wall behind him. 

Left alone, Kent’s fire can and will burn on anything, able to overtake even the supposedly fireproof buildings of midtown Manhattan. The last thing they need right now is the block of apartment buildings crumbling because their support beams have melted. 

“Careful,” Jack warns, voice a low grumble as he turns back to Kent. 

He does a quick scan of the area and finds their bad guy, a villain who calls himself Surge, on top of a car, a panicked civilian scrambling out of the driver’s seat. He has to stop the blast Kent sends out with one of his own to keep the terrified woman from being roasted alive. By the time he’s done that, Surge is moving again. Electricity arcs from Surge’s fingers and Jack throws ice right back at him, the lightning that was aiming for Jack’s chest skittering across a sheet of ice instead. The ice shatters, but the lightning dissipates, so Jack pays no mind.

Police cruisers skid to a stop at both ends of the short street they’re on, and Jack can hear more sirens approaching. They need to get this contained before Surge wreaks any more havoc than he already has, and before anyone gets caught in the crossfire. 

They need to stop this before Kent does something stupid and gets someone hurt. 

Surge is throwing arcs of electricity around carelessly, not looking where they go or what they hit. Kent is being just as reckless, chasing Surge with blasts of fire that land on the walls of buildings instead of finding their target, causing more harm than they do good. Jack curses under his breath and freezes over as much of the buildings as he can so that Kent’s flames don’t crawl any further up, so that their intense heat doesn’t do any more damage. 

“Stay back!” Jack calls out as officers begin to move closer to the action. He throws up a wall of ice waist high to deter them from coming any closer. “Kent, you need to stop! You’re gonna hurt someone!” 

Surge cackles, a twisted sound that makes Jack shudder, and stops moving, going so still that it worries Jack. 

A sickening smile splits his face. Ice creeps up Jack’s arms. “Yeah, little hothead. Listen to your boss and cool it,” Surge taunts. 

Kent’s hands curl into fists at his sides and his arms go up in flames. Surge laughs again. The sound is chilling, even to Jack. Kent’s fire climbs up to his shoulders and he lets out a noise of frustration that can be heard over the roar of fire and the crackle of electricity. Kent’s so focused on Surge’s words that he doesn’t notice the steadily growing balls of electricity in the villain’s hands. 

“Kent, look out!” Jack shouts just a bit too late. He knows his ice can’t really stop Surge’s electricity. He saw how easily the lightning shattered it earlier.

There’s not enough time for Kent to get out of the way. There’s not enough time for Jack to protect both himself and the officers at the ends of the street. There’s not enough time for much of anything really.

Three things happen in very quick succession. 

Kent and Surge both shout and throw fire and lightning at each other.

Jack sees this happen and throws up ice barriers as thick as he can manage to keep the officers at the ends of the street from being hurt. 

The fire and the lightning meet in between Kent and Surge and they explode.

Kent appears unaffected, keeping his hands raised to divert the flames around him. Surge stumbles back with a grunt and smacks into a wall, sliding down it and landing in a heap on the ground. The explosion nearly bursts Jack’s eardrums and knocks him back so hard that his head cracks against the pavement. He doesn’t pass out, but he almost wishes he did. The heat is unbearable, and for the few seconds he’s enveloped in flames, he feels like he’s melting. Not like he’s being burned, but like he’s actually melting like an ice cube. He forces ice to form around his body in a protective layer but it doesn’t do much. It stops the flames from searing his skin, at the very least, but it doesn’t stop him from feeling like he’s going to melt into a puddle on the pavement. 

The fire finally dissipates and Jack can finally see the black and white spots dancing across his vision. Concussion, probably, he thinks absently. He’s having trouble keeping his thoughts together at the moment. He can’t really think straight. Probably a concussion. It’s hard to think straight. 

He shakes his head to try to clear it and instantly regrets that. 

He tries sitting up slowly instead, and that ends with him lurching to the side and emptying the contents of his stomach onto the pavement. He vaguely registers that there are people moving around him in a flurry of motion, the ice barriers must’ve melted. There are police officers restraining Surge with reinforced cuffs that’ll dampen his powers. Firefighters are struggling to contain the flames that are consuming the wall of an apartment building. Jack raises a shaking hand and tries his hardest to help, tries to ice over the wall to stop the fire. But the ice sparks and dies in his hands, his entire body trembling with the effort of just sitting upright. He breathes heavily and tries to get a grip on what’s going on. Instead of clearing his thoughts, he ends up turning and retching again. EMTs are at his side seconds later.

He tries to shoo them away, direct them to any civilians that might need medical attention, but they assure him there are none. The ice barriers he put up held enough to keep everyone outside of them safe. Their main concern is him. He doesn’t have the strength to argue. 

He feels blood trickling down the back of his head, dripping down to his neck, and his ribs ache and his arm feels numb. He doesn’t think any of that’s a good sign, so he starts so he actually starts cooperating with the EMTs rather than being indifferent to their presence. He lets them check his eyes and answers them when they ask what hurts and lets them put some ridiculous neck brace on him while they manhandle him onto a stretcher. 

He wishes he inherited his mother’s healing too, rather than just his father’s ice. Still, he’s thankful just to be alive right now.

It’s not until he’s on the stretcher, eyes barely open anymore, that he sees Kent standing just a few feet away, two police officers standing in front of him. He’s staring at Jack as they load him into the back of an ambulance, his mouth hanging open in something between shock and horror. The officers follow his gaze and they catch sight of the small mob of reporters flocking towards the ambulance Jack is being put into. Suddenly Kent is forgotten, and they’re moving to get people away from Jack. The look on Kent’s face turns stony, and he turns away. 

Jack is rushed to the hospital. Sara and Quinn, the couple that’s been hosting him in New York, are already there when he arrives. They tell him they’ve contacted his parents and that Bob and Alicia are going to come down from Montreal as soon as they can. Jack smiles and thanks them, and then Quinn has her hand on Jack’s shoulder and she’s draining his pain and the sudden absence of it is overwhelming. 

He passes out. 

When they wake him two hours later to check on him, his left wrist is in a splint and there’s a needle stuck in his arm and Quinn and Sara are watching over him carefully. He smiles at them and lets the nurse check his eyes and mumbles out sleepy answers to questions and passes out again. They wake him once more and repeat everything, give him a small cup of water when he asks and let him fall back to sleep. 

The next time he wakes, he does it on his own, and his parents are in the room.

They’re having a conversation in hushed whispers with Sara and Quinn, Alicia looking distressed and Bob with his arm around his wife’s shoulders. He doesn’t let them know he’s awake yet, listening to see what they’re talking about. 

“...came here as soon as we saw got the call. They said it’s a couple of cracked ribs, a slight sprain and a minor concussion. Everything seems worse because all that heat took a  lot out of him,” Quinn is explaining. 

Quinn is really the reason Jack got placed here in New York to train. An ex-member of the League of Heroes, just like Jack’s father, Quinn is one of many ‘retired’ heroes that agreed to host young potential League members, training them and teaching them control. She and Sara are old friends of Bob’s, and pulled some strings to get Jack placed with them. 

Quinn was inducted into the League at the same time as Bob. They trained together, got certified as heroes together, rose through the ranks of the League together. He always said she was the closest thing he had to a sister. Her abilities to control people’s emotions and feelings, and Bob’s skill at using his own powers made them a duo to be feared. 

Quinn even met Sara at the same time Bob met Alicia, at some fancy party the Alicia attended because she had to, and Sara was planning. Quinn was Bob’s best woman, and Bob was Quinn’s man of honor. Jack grew up hearing stories about his ‘aunts’ in New York.

Now, after almost a year of living and training with them, Jack trusts Quinn and Sara just as much as Bob does. So when Quinn’s next words come with a slight smile, Jack knows he’s going to be okay. 

“You and Jack really can’t take the heat, can you Bobby?” Quinn teases, and Jack lets out a breath he didn’t know he was holding. 

Alicia relaxes, and Bob’s shoulders slump.

“Your boy is pretty great,” Sara says, crossing her arms over her chest. “He saved a lot of people today with some quick thinking.” 

Jack clears his throat then, blinking his eyes fully open and offering a sheepish smile to the adults in the room. 

“Hey,” he says, voice a little rough. 

Bob and Alicia’s faces light up and they’re at his bedside immediately, while Sara moves to flag down a nurse. 

“Jack, honey, I’m so glad you’re okay. What happened?” Alicia asks, concern written in everything about her. 

Jack tells them what happened, having to pause to catch his breath a couple times. He gives as many details as he can, from the call they got about Surge to feeling like he was going to be melted into nothing to Kent’s stony look as he walked away from Jack while they put him into the ambulance. 

The nurse tells him he’s lucky he’s alive. Anyone inside the barriers Jack threw up should’ve been dead, she tells him. Kent and Surge survived because their bodies were built to withstand that kind of heat. Jack’s lucky that his ice was strong enough to counteract it. As it is, he’s going to take a while to recover, his body seriously drained after taking a hit like that. 

They say his wrist should be fine in a week, his ribs a week or two after that, and they want to keep an eye on the concussion. They’ll keep him for a day or two for observation, and if everything looks okay, they’ll let him go home. 

His parents stay as long as they’re allowed, and return the next morning with Quinn and Sara as soon as they can. They sit with him for the whole day, Quinn and Sara regaling his parents with stories Jack hasn’t told them yet from the time he’s spent in New York with them. 

Late in the afternoon, Bob takes a phone call from the leader of the League of Heroes. Bob tells them that she said she saw what Jack did and wanted to thank him for it. Anyone who can do what he did obviously deserved to be made a full member of the League. 

When they turn on the TV after Bob hangs up, they see video clips of Jack throwing up the walls of ice to shield people from the explosion all over the news. Most of them are blurry, but there are a few clips that clearly show Jack looking from Kent to the ends of the street. His expression is one of unadulterated fear as ice forms around his hands and blocks him, Kent and Surge off from everyone else. They all end when the explosion rocks the ground and the thick barriers melt to the ground, showing Jack lying prone on his back, Kent staring at him in horror.

Jack watches different clips on three different news channels before he snatches the remote and shuts off the TV. 

Alicia turns to look at her son in concern. 

“Jack, honey, is everything alright?” she asks softly. 

Jacks shakes his head slightly, looking away from his mother and father and the two women who have treated him like their son for so long. 

“I don’t want to.”

It’s like the words are being ripped out of him with how rough his voice sounds.

Bob takes Jack’s hand in both of his. “Don’t want to what, son?”

“I can’t join the League. I… I can’t, Papa,” he says, swallowing past the lump in his throat. He raises his free hand slightly. He tries his hardest to form something, anything, in his open palm. There’s a spark of energy and a few snowflakes hover unsteadily over his hand and then nothing. 

“Oh,” Bob breathes quietly. 

“I just want to go home,” Jack whispers, and he closes his eyes, and pretends to be asleep.

He’s obviously not, but they let him pretend. 

 


	2. Samwell

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> College was really never on Jack's radar, but plans have changed, and he'll have to adapt.

Jack’s released from the hospital the next day. 

He’s in Montreal two days later. 

His wrist heals fine within the week. His ribs take a little longer, and cause him a lot of trouble, but they heal up soon after he gets back home. 

The concussion is trickier. 

It doesn’t let Jack access the full extent of his powers which proves to be irritating very fast. He’s itching to train, to exercise his powers, to do something as simple as go for a goddamn run, but his concussion doesn’t let him do even that much for a long time.

He’s beginning to feel useless, lying around the house and just waiting for something to happen so he can function normally again.

The concussion ends up clearing up a month after he gets home. He starts working out again, and though his powers are still on the fritz they’re at least a little stronger now. He still feels useless, like he should be doing more, training more, but he’s making some sort of progress. That has to count for something.

It’s a month after the concussion clears that Bob approaches Jack about the juniors leagues he helps out with. 

Jack, at first, has absolutely no idea what his father is talking about. 

And then Bob takes him to a practice and Jack falls in love. 

Junior leagues are generally a disaster, but one that is well worth the effort. The kids are all just developing powers that they can’t control, and there are sparks flying and a couple of kids complaining about other children, but over all, Jack thinks he loves this. 

“Seems like the kids all like you,” Bob says, a little smug. He’s standing over Jack where Jack is crouched at the kids’ height, a tiny swirl of snowflakes dancing over his open hand. Jack smiles up at his dad as the kids all cheer when Jack sends a spray of snow over their heads. 

Jack comes back to every practice that his dad helps out with, and even a few that he doesn’t. The kids all love Coach Z, and they flourish under Jack’s guidance, to the point where a few of them actually don’t have to come to practices any more. Jack hates having to see kids go, but it’s kind of great, knowing he’s helped them so much. 

The fact that his own powers seem to be settling back to normal is just a pleasant side effect.

Jack is Coach Z for almost a year and a half, before he starts thinking he needs to do something more. 

This time it’s his mother who approaches him with an idea. 

Jack Zimmermann is prepared for a lot of things, but the SATs are not one of them. He takes them twice, and considers a third go before both his parents and Quinn and Sara assure him that his second scores are more than good enough. College applications are not something he thought he’d ever have to consider, and they throw Jack for a loop at first, but his mother and Sara talk him through them, and he ends up enrolling at Samwell University for the 2011-2012 school year. 

Samwell University is his mother’s alma mater, a school nationally renowned for its acceptance of Powered and LGBT+ students. Alicia makes a few jokes about their ‘one in four, maybe more’ saying, and assures Jack he’ll do well there. 

That doesn’t ease the anxiety in his chest as Quinn and Sara help him move into his freshman dorm, a full four years older than his roommate. It sits there and twists itself around Jack’s heart and has ice creeping up his arms as he unpacks.

But then his roommate bursts in by himself, and introduces himself as Shitty Knight with a huge smile on his face. Suddenly, the anxiety is all but gone, and the ice creeping up Jack’s arms has disappeared too. There’s a smile on his face to take the place of the pinched expression he’d been wearing while he waited. 

“Woah, Quinn McAllister?” Shitty says, turning to Quinn and Sara after he introduces himself to Jack. He shakes Quinn’s hand, and Sara goes right for a hug and Shitty’s smile only widens. “You’re like, a legend. You basically pioneered the movement for more female superheroes to be let into the League when you joined. It was incredible!” Quinn raises an eyebrow, and Jack makes an ‘I don’t know’ sound in response. None of them had been expecting Shitty to focus on that aspect of Quinn’s career. It’s a pleasant surprise. 

It’s a pleasant surprise, too, to find out that Shitty is Powered, a powerful mind reader, with limited telekinetic powers. It’s also helpful in getting some things up the stairs to their dorm, but that’s besides the point. 

Shitty is the fastest friend Jack has ever made. 

Quinn and Sara leave once the room is set. Jack would be sad to see them go just because he’s so into the conversation they’re having, even if he wasn’t sad about having to say goodbye to his aunts again. 

He closes the door behind them and turns around and sees Shitty still smiling as he puts sheets on his bed and he decides that Samwell was the best decision he could’ve made. 

Two weeks later, they meet a guy named Johnson, when he stumbles through a tree, through Shitty and comes to a stop in front of Jack. 

“Jack Zimmermann! Just the guy I was looking for!” He grins wide and turns to Shitty. Jack narrows his eyes at the back of the guy’s head. “You too! Come on. We’ve got places to be, guys.”

“Uh, who are you, brah?” Shitty asks, confusion written in the lines of his face.

He grins. “I’m John Johnson! Don’t worry. This’ll get explained soon. It’s important to the narrative. I gotta take you to the Haus.”

Jack shrugs and decides there’s no harm in following him. 

“Okay,” Johnson starts as he leads Jack and Shitty across the quad, “you guys don’t have a PSG, yet right?” When Shitty raises an eyebrow, Johnson shakes his head. “Right, no. Powered Safety Group.” 

Shitty nods. “Oh, they told us about that at orientation. You run one of those?”

“I don’t run it, that’s a couple of the seniors. Real great guys. You’ll like them. Which is good, cause you gotta be in this PSG. Otherwise this story falls apart. Anyway. The Haus is our home base. Me and a couple of the other guys live there. We’re having a meeting for prospectives, in like, right now. Come on.”

He ushers them through the front door of a house that looks like it should be condemned and shoves them into seats on a couch that looks like it should’ve been burned years ago. 

The meeting is strange to say the least, but still, by the end of it, Jack and Shitty have agreed to join Johnson’s PSG, the one that everyone refers to by the roman numeral ⅩⅤ. 

Johnson seems thrilled. 

“It’s because I’m doing my job,” he explains when they ask why he’s so excited. 

“What,” Jack asks, “are you the recruitment chair or something?”

Johnson freezes. “Yeah, sure. Something like that. Gotta run.” 

And then Johnson melts into the ground and leaves Jack and Shitty staring after him in utter confusion. 

“Did that just?” Shitty asks. 

Jack shrugs, and they slowly walk away, pretending that whatever that was hadn’t just happened. 

Freshman year is relatively uneventful after that. Johnson makes a habit of phasing through their door at opportune moments, always just as one of them is asking a question the other can’t answer, or Jack feels like ice is going to overtake his body and freeze him and everything around him. He’s thankful for it, even if he is very confused. 

Johnson says he always shows up when they need him out of pure luck, and they’d believe that, if not for the way he was always saying cryptic shit, like “There are pros to knowing the plotline and backstories.” 

Johnson is unnerving. 

But by the end of the year, Shitty and Jack have made friends with the seniors through him. It gets them dibs for the Haus next year. It makes Jack the head of the PSG. So the don’t comment on Johnson’s strange behavior. 

Two weeks into sophomore year, Jack and Shitty find themselves getting dragged out of the Haus one morning by Johnson. He presses travel mugs full of coffee into their hands and tells them to not ask questions. They have a job to do, freshmen to recruit. 

ⅩⅤ doesn’t have a recruitment chair, but Johnson seems to act like one anyway. 

Jack is technically in charge of him, but still, they do as they’re told and don’t ask questions. 

Jack is beginning to wonder if maybe he should’ve asked questions when Johnson mutters a very quick apology and shoves him into a passing group of people. 

He doesn’t even have time to be surprised. 

“Woah, dude, you okay?” someone above him says. 

Jack registers then that he hasn’t hit the ground. 

Neither has the coffee he was holding. 

When he looks around, he finds he’s suspended almost horizontally, a foot off the ground. His mug floats next to him, not a drop spilled. 

Johnson is smiling, Shitty is staring, and there’s a girl standing with both of her arms held out, hands open. 

“You should watch where you’re going, you know,” she says with a smile, and flicks her wrist. Jack finds himself suddenly upright, the travel mug back in his hand. “That could’ve ended a lot worse.”

“Thanks,” Jack says, his brow furrowing in confusion. Ice crawls up to his wrists. 

Johnson steps up then, and Jack scowls at him. “Thanks for stopping my friend here. He’s a little clumsy.”

“I’m not,” Jack protests softly. He notices the two huge guys standing by the small girl when one of them laughs at his complaint. 

Johnson goes on like he didn’t hear Jack. “I’m Johnson, by the way. John Johnson. This is Shitty Knight, and the clumsy one is Jack Zimmermann. You’re pretty powerful. What’s your name?” 

The girl eyes him warily, but extends a hand anyway. “I’m Larissa. This is Adam and Justin. And you’re welcome for the help, but we’ve gotta get going. PSG meetings to get to and all that.”

Johnson shakes her hand, and then phases right through her to shakes Adam’s and Justin’s. Larissa’s eyes go wide and she looks at Jack and Shitty as though she needs confirmation that that had actually just happened. Jack rolls his eyes. 

“Sorry, he does that sometimes. I don’t think he gets that walking through people is a little rude,” Jack says, reaching out to shake Larissa’s hand. 

She shakes her head and shakes Jack’s hand at the same time. “Are you really Jack Zimmermann?” she asks. 

Jack sighs, but he nods an affirmative. “Yeah, that’s me.”

“Cool,” she says, and that seems to be the end of that. Jack smiles. He likes Larissa. She reminds him of Camilla Collins. He makes a mental note to introduce them later.

Johnson phases through Jack to stand behind him again and Jack shudders, glaring over his shoulder. 

“Listen,” he says, turning back to Larissa and the boys at her back, “Johnson’s right, you seem pretty powerful, by the looks of it. If you haven’t found a PSG yet, I think ⅩⅤ might be a good fit for you. Adam and Justin too.” 

He doesn’t know why he says it, he barely knows these three, but it feels right. The pleased sound that Johnson lets out behind him lets him know that he’s right in that assumption. Having Larissa, Adam and Justin in their group is meant to be. 

Or something like that. 

It feels right, and they agree to come to their meeting, and by the end of the day, they’ve added Adam, Justin and Larissa to their group. Shitty’s given them nicknames before they’ve even left the Haus, dubbing them Lardo, Holster, and Ransom. 

Jack has no doubts that they’ll fit right in. 

Lardo takes to Camilla instantly, and Jack smiles to himself at that. Ransom and Holster seem like they’ve been friends forever, even though they only just met when they moved into their freshman dorm at the beginning of the year. 

By the end of Jack’s sophomore year, Ransom and Holster have secured the Haus attic for their sophomore year. Lardo is one of Jack’s closest friends. And Jack has to find a new go to date for Winter Screw, because Lardo stole Camilla from him. 

He pretends he’s annoyed, and Camilla sends a blast of air at his face. Lardo catches him when he stumbles and the look they give each other is so disgustingly sweet, it makes something in Jack melt a little. 

He laughs at the irony of that thought, and goes back to helping Ransom and Holster move into the attic. They don’t really need all that much help moving boxes, because the two of them can heave buses over their heads, and they only get stronger together, but it’s the thought that counts. 

With Ransom and Holster in the attic, and Shitty and Johnson with him on the second floor, Jack thinks living in the Haus will no doubt be interesting next year. 

He’s right.

He spends the summer with his dad heading up junior leagues just like always and he comes back to campus feeling better about this school year than any other. 

Last year, Ransom and Holster busted through one of the walls of the Haus wrestling, Lardo and Camilla broke one of the windows messing around, and Shitty got a headache that he accidentally projected that knocked the whole group of them on their asses for two straight days. 

Johnson is still Johnson and that speaks for itself. 

Needless to say, Jack thinks that he can handle pretty much anything that people can throw at him this year. He’s seen enough already, he’s prepared for anything

He’s not. 


	3. Enter Eric Bittle

Jack is not prepared for Eric Richard Bittle. 

He is not prepared for five feet and seven inches of passive aggressiveness and southern hospitality, and pies in the kitchen all the time and this much goddamn warmth. 

He meets Eric two weeks into his junior year, because apparently all important things happen two weeks into the school year. 

Johnson drags Eric into the Haus living room five minutes after their meeting starts and while Shitty is in the middle of his speech about the importance of choosing the right PSG, and what theirs has to offer. A lot of people are there because of him, Jack knows, but he also thinks Johnson is responsible for a lot of the prospective members there too. He knows that Johnson’s brought at least three of them, Eric, and a pair named Ollie and Wicks. 

Jack remembers Ollie and Wicks, because they had been fused together in one giant body when Johnson dragged them, terrified, through the front door. They had stumbled apart and smiled sheepishly, taking seats on the biohazard couch. Johnson raced out of the Haus again, shouting over his shoulder about one more he had to hunt down. Lardo and Camilla had stared in concern, but they all went on as though it were nothing out of the ordinary. 

Eric, on the other hand, is half on fire and squawking in indignation when Johnson tugs him into the Haus and shuts the door behind them.

Jack shies away from the heat a little on instinct, his mind unhelpfully flashing through images of lightning and fire and electricity. Ice creeps up Jack’s hands, and he shoves them into his pockets to hide it. He’s supposed to be the one in charge here, not letting his control slip at the sight of a little fire.

Eric pats at the flames on his shoulders and the few tiny fires burning in his hair. Once they’re out, he huffs in irritation and mumbles something about how Johnson could’ve just asked nicely. He sits where Johnson indicates, but when he turns to glare at Johnson again, the other has already melted through the floor. 

Jack hates when he does that. 

He rolls his eyes and takes over for Shitty, a little more of his attention than is strictly necessary falling on Eric as he gives his speech about their PSG. 

By the time he’s done and people have made decisions, they have added Eric, Ollie and Wicks and two other freshmen to the group. Jack doesn’t miss the way that Eric sits a little away from all of them, and then disappears into the kitchen. 

“Yo, Jacky!” Shitty shouts a few minutes later, when he’s looking for the freshmen to take them on a tour of the Haus. “You seen Bitty?”

Jack stares back in confusion. 

“Eric!” Shitty elaborates. Jack points towards the kitchen, where it smells like something is baking. Ransom and Holster go with them to see what’s going on, and they’re all a little surprised at what they find. 

Bitty looks back at them with a flush coloring his cheeks and a small embarrassed smile tugging at his lips. 

“Sorry, pies just sort of appear whenever I find my way into a kitchen,” Bitty apologizes. 

“You’ve been here for like, five minutes,” Shitty says, a little dumbfounded.

“When was the last time we even bought any kind of fruit?” Holster asks.

He doesn’t hesitate in going for the pie though. 

“Oh, you probably shouldn’t eat that yet. It’s got to sit for a minute,” Bitty warns, and Holster sighs dramatically. 

Jack shakes his head at Holster and touches the pie tin with the tip of one finger, cooling the metal and the pie it holds instantly. 

Bitty makes a noise of protest, no doubt worried that Jack is going to burn himself, but he seems to relax a little when Jack pulls his hand back, entirely unaffected. He stares at Jack, perplexed, until Jack steps back, out of the room entirely. 

Being around Bitty is unsettling, and he’s realized why. 

Bitty reminds Jack of Kent. 

He’s nothing like Kent, of course. He’s reserved where Kent is brash and bold. He’s more constant warmth where Kent is searing heat. 

But it’s a near enough thing that it has Jack retreating to his room, not noticing the disappointed look Bitty gives as he leaves the kitchen. 

He realizes he was very, very wrong in assuming he was prepared for anything. 

But he’ll adapt, he thinks. He always does. 

He adapted to a whole new way of living when his powers manifested when he was young. 

He adapted to living in New York, in a completely new country, with a new language he didn’t grasp quite as well as his native one, with women he’d only heard stories about.

He adapted to working with Kent, adapted until they were a flawless pair and their powers complemented each other and they depended on one another. 

He adapted when his powers disappeared and left him drowning in a sea of uncertainty, not knowing how to live without the ice under his skin anymore. 

He adapted to coaching.

He adapted to living with Shitty. 

He adapted, he changed and he continued on as though nothing had happened. 

This will be no different, he’s sure. 

Bittle’s gone by the time Jack returns to the kitchen to try to scrape together a dinner that won’t kill everyone, and the worry slips to the back of his mind, barely even a thought anymore. 

He sends out an email to welcome the freshmen to the PSG the next morning and puts it entirely out of his mind after that. 

The third week of classes goes by quickly. Ollie and Wicks show up at the Haus a couple times, more often as two separate people than as one, which Jack appreciates. 

They’re very hard to understand when they’re fused together. 

Jack likes them. They’re mellow and nice enough and have excellent control over their abilities. 

When they leave, Jack isn’t particularly concerned about them losing control, so he doesn’t think of them much. 

He isn’t thinking of any of the new freshmen very much, come to think of it. 

He should probably check on them soon, he thinks. 

He has a history paper to start, first, so he heads for the library.

On the way, he runs into the freshmen he least wants to see. 

Bittle is standing in front of a guy from the Samwell men’s lacrosse team, the other boy hulking over Bittle’s smaller form.

He looks completely at ease. 

Bittle, on the other hand, looks terrified. 

He’s gripping the straps of his backpack so hard that Jack can see his knuckles turning white from across the green. He stops a short distance away and listens, waiting to see what Bittle does, how his powers react. 

“I’m sorry, I really should be going, I’m going to be late for class,” Bittle’s saying as he tries to push past the guy. 

The lax player, Chad, Jack thinks his name is, backs Bitty up against a tree instead. 

Ice crawls up Jack’s arms. 

“You know, when I heard something about a tiny guy joining up with ⅩⅤ across the street, I didn’t believe it. I thought it was just a rumor. What’s a little guy like you doing around a bunch of big guys like that? Something you’re not telling people?” 

Chad is halfway through saying a word that Jack would really like to not have to hear when Bitty bursts into flames. 

Jack just blinks in surprise for a second. 

One second, Bittle is nearly cowering in front of Chad, pressed into the tree as much as possible. The next, his entire body is engulfed in flames. 

Chad is standing too close. 

His shirt goes up in flames before Jack can do anything, but a quick movement from Jack stops that disaster in it’s tracks. Chad is left with a singed shirt covered in ice, but he’s fine, so Jack honestly doesn’t care. 

He’s more concerned about the flaming freshman in front of him and the tree that Bittle has just set on fire as well. 

“Go,” Jack snaps at Chad, as he drops his backpack. “Go to student health if you’re hurt. If not, just leave. Get away.” 

He leaves no room for question, and Chad scurries away, muttering something about, “Fucking mutant powered fucking freaks.”

Jack ignores him, mostly. 

Ice crawls up his arms, but he uses that to put out the tree and freeze over the grass so the fire Bitty is surrounded by doesn’t spread and cause anymore damage. 

Bitty’s staring dumbly at his hands, like that’ll help him any, refusing to meet Jack’s eyes. 

Jack huffs in frustration and shakes his head. He’ll have to do this differently then. Bittle clearly isn’t going to reign himself in. Jack will have to do it for him. He reaches out, ignoring the drain of being so near such intense heat for extended periods of time, and grabs Bittle’s wrists. Bittle jerks and yanks his hands back from Jack’s grip, but not before Jack can get cuffs of ice on him. He manipulates the ice until it’s covering most of Bittle’s arms, and creeping towards his chest. 

Jack ignores the way he can feel his ice sputtering and dying in his hands every few second, the heat taking his energy faster than he’d usually expend it. 

When he’s gotten the ice entirely over Bittle’s shoulders, the fire finally dies and Jack sighs in relief. 

“No, oh, God, no, not again. No, no, no, I can believe I’ve… oh, dammit,” Bittle’s muttering as Jack look down at the ugly burns on his palms. He hisses in pain when he moves them and takes a breath to calm himself before rounding on Bittle. 

“Are you kidding me? Do you think this is a joke, Bittle? Your powers are dangerous and you have no control over them! That little display was the worst control I’ve ever seen from someone your age. I’ve coached nine year olds who have better control over more difficult abilities than you have! That was pathetic! This is serious, and everyone else is taking it seriously, except for you! You could’ve killed that guy, and if I weren’t here, you’d have set half the campus up in flames and as it is you hurt me! Do you have any kind of explanation for this, Bittle? What the fuck were you thinking just going up in flames like that? What kind of person relaxes their control that much?” 

Maybe, Jack thinks, disappointed, maybe this kid is more like Kent then he’d originally thought. 

When he looks down, really looks at Bittle, he’s taken aback though. 

Bittle is shaking, trembling. 

There are tears in his eyes. 

His grip on the straps of his bag is white knuckled, and it only makes the shaking look worse. 

Bittle opens and closes his mouth a few times before he gets out a quiet, “I’m late for class,” and shoves past Jack. 

Despite Jack’s best efforts earlier, Bittle’s skin is still hot to the touch. Scalding hot. As he brushes Jack’s arm, Jack shouts, recoiling from Bittle with a venomous look on his face. He doesn’t mean to look like that, but that hurt, and his palms are already aching, and he’s so drained from being around fire like Bittle’s, and now his arm feels like it’s been set ablaze too. He hisses as he looks back down at where Bittle should be. 

Only, when he looks, Bittle is gone, already tearing across the green without looking back, flames licking up his arms and encasing his backpack. 

Jack, for the first time in two years, thinks that Johnson may have made a mistake. 

He gathers his bag and heads back to the Haus, thoroughly disappointed in one of the ⅩⅤ members for the first time. With Lardo studying abroad, there’s no one to call March and April for him, but through sheer luck, they’re already there. 

He later finds out they were there because of Johnson, but he doesn’t say anything about it. He’s learned not to, though he wonders if he should question Johnson more often. 

He shoves the thought to the back of his mind and shows the girls his injuries, wincing when he lets the ice he’d have over them disappear. From her perch on the counter, Camilla pulls a face at the look of the burns, but she says nothing. Jack’s quietly grateful for that as he lets April and March shove him into a chair at the table. 

April sets her hands on Jack’s shoulders and he feels his whole body from the shoulders down go numb. He bites back the rush of panic at not being able to feel anything. His mind flashes back to fire and lightning and an awful, awful explosion for a moment. He takes a second to reassure himself, and then nods. March goes to work then, healing Jack’s burns while April keeps his body numb, so he doesn’t have to feel his skin being stitched back together slowly.

March finishes quickly, leaving Jack impressed as always and asks what happened. 

Jack, knowing he can’t keep this from the rest of the group, tells them. 

**Author's Note:**

> the tumblr -> _[godmachine](http://godmachine.tumblr.com/)_


End file.
